Nepal earthquake triggers deadly avalanche at Mount Everest, 10 killed

Kathmandu: An avalanche at Mount Everest base camp triggered by a massive earthquake killed at least 10 people on Saturday, including foreign climbers, a Nepalese official said.

"We don't have the details yet, but 10 have been reported dead so far, including foreign climbers," Gyanendra Kumar Shrestha from Nepal's tourism department told AFP.

The avalanche struck between the Khumbu Icefall, a notoriously treacherous rugged area of collapsed ice and snow, and the base camp where most climbing expeditions are, said Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

Shretha said the bodies of eight people had been recovered and an unknown number remain missing or injured.

Nepal's Home Ministry had earlier said that 30 people were injured at the base camp, while other climbers gave unconfirmed reports of more avalanches elsewhere on the mountain.

"We are starting to receive the injured, the most severe of them with many fractures, he was blown away by the avalanche and broke both legs. For the camps closer to where the avalanche hit, our Sherpas believe that a lot of people may have been buried in their tents," Danish climber Carsten Lillelund Pedersen wrote on Facebook. He and his Belgian companion, Jelle Veyt, were at the Khumbu Icefall, close to the base camp at an altitude of 5,000 meters (16,500 feet) when the earthquake hit.

He said that a steady flow of people were fleeing the base camp for more secure areas down the mountain.

Local reports in China said an amateur team encountered an avalanche on the north slope of the mountains at an elevation of more than 7,000 meters (22,965feet) and safely retreated to a camp at a lower elevation.

Thomas Frese Carlsen, a Danish schoolteacher who was in Nepal with 12 students from Denmark, said that rumors of another quake caused many to sleep out in the open.

"We will sleep outside tonight, on the lawn," he told Denmark's TV2 channel. He described the quake as "freakin' wild."

Climber Robin Trygg told the Swedish news agency TT his Sherpa guides had been in radio contact with other guides on Everest and that they reported an avalanche there hitting as many as 80 people.

"We were sitting in the tent and drinking tea when the earth, all of a sudden, began shaking. We didn't understand what happened," he told the news agency by telephone.

Another Swedish climber, Jenny Adhikari, was riding a bus in the town of Melamchi when she said she felt earth moving.

"All the houses around me have tumbled down. I think there are lot of people who have died," she told he Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. "A huge stone crashed only 20 meters from the bus."

The magnitude-7.8 quake struck around noon Saturday about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Kathmandu, almost exactly one year after the deadliest avalanche on record hit Everest, killing 16 Sherpa guides on April 18, 2014.

The 2014 deaths occurred at the Khumbu Icefall, where the edge of the slow-moving glaciers is known to crack, cave and send huge chunks of ice tumbling without warning.

More than 4,000 climbers have scaled the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit since 1953, when it was first conquered by New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. The numbers have skyrocketed in recent years, with more than 800 climbers during the 2013 spring season.

Following the 2014 disaster, the guides accused Nepal's government of not doing enough for them despite making millions in permit fees from the Western mountaineers who attempt to scale the Himalayan peaks. The guides protested by refusing to work on the mountain, leading to the cancellation of last year's climbing season.